


the sight of you will prove to me i'm still alive

by gay_writes_with_mac



Series: Platonic Oneshots [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Glenn and Tara are disaster best friends, Hangover, Heart-to-Heart, Maggie is a Parent, Mom Friend Maggie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:21:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24802246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gay_writes_with_mac/pseuds/gay_writes_with_mac
Summary: Someone needs to take Tara to bed, and Maggie appears to be the only person sober enough for the job.
Relationships: Maggie Greene/Glenn Rhee, Tara Chambler & Maggie Greene
Series: Platonic Oneshots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1793905
Kudos: 16





	the sight of you will prove to me i'm still alive

Someone needs to take Tara to bed.

Tara and Glenn went on a run yesterday morning and came back this afternoon with, along with the list Maggie had sent them out with, a  _ lot  _ of alcohol. Good alcohol. Glenn had held up a bottle of Scotch that he’d insisted was sixty-two years old and would have cost thirty grand when things still cost money instead of risk, and although Maggie cannot understand what would make a bottle of liquid so good it was worth thirty thousand dollars, Glenn and Tara seemed to think it was worth the price when they cracked it open around their small campfire.

That was a couple hours ago, and although Maggie doesn’t drink, she’s been babysitting her husband and his best friend since they first sat down. Now Glenn is pink-cheeked and giggling, but Tara’s been through that stage and passed it, and now she’s drinking just to do it without even tasting the liquor anymore, dazed and confused and struggling to keep her balance, and her gaze keeps drifting towards the graveyard slowly expanding across its corner of Alexandria. There’s something fragile behind those brown doe eyes, something at the point of shattering, broken pieces just barely held together, and Maggie’s heart goes out to her as she watches her sip slowly on ridiculously expensive Scotch she isn’t even enjoying.

“Gonna...gonna take Tara home…” Glenn announces suddenly, sounding very proud of himself. “She’s had...she’s had too much to drink…”

“Oh,  _ Tara’s  _ had too much to drink, now, has she?” Maggie laughs and sighs at the same time, tugging the brim of his baseball cap down over his eyes. “That’s the blind leadin’ the blind. I’ll get her home. ‘N put that bottle away, the pair of you have had more than enough.”

Before he can argue, she tugs the brim of the cap down again so it taps him on the nose and gives him a push from behind towards their house as she heads over to Tara. “Come on, T. Bedtime.”

“Not the boss of me,” Tara slurs, waving the glass at Maggie to accentuate her point. “‘S a free country, I can - can enjoy the  _ cool night air  _ and a drink or two-”

”Or ten,” Maggie finishes, grabbing Tara’s arm and hauling her to her feet. She stumbles at once, thrown off balance by the alcohol, and Maggie instinctively reaches out to catch her. Tara staggers, and Maggie sighs, wrapping the other woman’s arm over her shoulder to keep her upright, her arm going around Tara’s waist. “Time for bed. You’ve had enough.”

“No, I  _ haven’t _ …” Tara insists sulkily, still slurring her words. “I need  _ more… _ ”

“You need more of that stuff like you need a hole in the head.” Maggie swats her arm affectionately, dragging Tara along towards her own home. Tara protests the whole way back to her apartment, but there’s no fury behind it, just grumpy mumbling while she stumbles after Maggie. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m so mean.” Maggie sighs, fumbling in Tara’s jacket pocket for keys. “You’ll be glad I didn’t leave you out there overnight in the morning.”

Tara mumbles something vaguely threatening, but her head is tilting slowly-but-surely to the side to rest on Maggie’s shoulder, her eyes half-closed. Maggie finds her keys, unlocks the front door, and helps her up the front step, guiding Tara towards her couch. “It’s too late to skip the hangover, but I’ll get you some water anyway. Just stay there, all right?”

Tara nods assent and leans back against the couch, still mumbling under her breath. Maggie gives her shoulder a pat and leaves her in search of the kitchen. 

Her house is a mess, and not just in the usual messy-disaster-lesbian kind of way. Dust has piled up, what looks like weeks worth of it, lining every surface in a dull gray blanket. There’s dishes piled in the sink, but not many, and an exploratory look into the pantry reveals that there’s no way Tara has been picking up her rations, not for days, maybe weeks depending on how much she’s actually been eating. Most concerning of all is the empty bottles piled up by the sink and on the countertops - more bottles than dishes and cans combined. 

Maggie finally scrounges up a clean cup and fills it with water from the tap, bringing it back to Tara’s side. The other woman’s sprawled herself out on her back, her arm hanging limply over the couch with her fingers trailing the floor. “If you’re gonna lay down, lay on your side,” Maggie directs, and the sharpness has gone out of her voice without her even trying to soften it. “If you get sick, you’ll choke.”

Tara sniffles faintly, and then Maggie realizes that she’s been crying. “What’s the matter, honey…?”

She’s not expecting an answer, not really. Tara clams up the second anyone tries to probe her for anything, even Glenn, pressing her lips together and going dead silent until they give up. But the alcohol’s put a few cracks in her resolve and loosened her lips, and Tara snuffles pathetically, looking up at Maggie with tears trickling down her flushed cheeks. “I miss my sister…”

Maggie misses her sister too. That’s a whole different kind of pain, losing someone that’s supposed to be your other half. She doesn’t know anything about Tara’s relationship with her sister - didn’t even know she had a sister till just now - but the way she says it tells her that they were close. Closer than most sisters. Like her and Beth.

“Tell me about her,” she says simply, sitting down on the floor by the couch to lean back against it, shifting around a bit to get comfortable. “What was she like?”

“Her name was...was Lilly. Lillian. She was older than me...seven years older.” Tara whimpers softly, more quiet sniffling noises coming from the couch. “Born - born so far apart - but I loved her, I really did - even if I was a...a pain in her ass, all the time…”

“Bein’ a pain’s part of your charm,” Maggie interjects gently. “Don’t start feeling guilty about things you did before now. Won’t do nothin’ but hurt you.”

“She was - she was a really good sister...the best. Took care of me...taught me how to do things...Lil taught me how to ride a bike…” Tara snuffles sadly, not even bothering to wipe away her tears in her inebriated state. “She let me ride hers all around our neighborhood and then I hit a curb and fell in a bush and she didn’t even laugh at me until she cleaned me up-”

“Sounds like a good older sister,” Maggie tells her, memories of her own experiences as an older sister and an eldest daughter flooding her mind. Lilly does sound like a good sister. Like she cared about Tara. Little sisters are meant to be annoying, so annoying you want to kill them sometimes, and Beth absolutely lived up to that - and she has no doubt in her mind that Tara wasn’t kidding about being a pain. But she hadn’t felt like she could live without Beth stumbling after her, chucking her birth control in the lake and getting into messes, and Tara’s lost that as well. That bond that doesn’t go away.

“Am I still a sister…?” Tara slurs, starting to roll onto her back again despite Maggie’s warnings. “Cause I had one, but now she’s dead...am I still a sister? Do I get to keep sayin’ I have one?”

“She’s still your sister, isn’t she? Even if she’s not here right now to boss you around and be older than you and call you a pain?” Tara nods, and Maggie ploughs forward before the alcohol can step in and ruin her message. “Then you’re a sister. You have a sister. Having a sister...that doesn’t go away.”

“I don’t know what to do without her,” Tara confesses, still loose-lipped from the Scotch, opening up to Maggie like a tulip opening its petals. “She’s always been there...never known a world without her, not till  _ now... _ I don’t know what to do without her…”

Against her better judgement, Maggie feels herself start to open up as well. It’s not smart, but all Maggie does is smart things. Maybe it’s time to do something she  _ wants  _ to do, not just the smart option. “I had a sister too. One. Younger. Six years younger, almost as much as you two. I knew a world without her, knew one for six years. But those six years were so much duller than my life after Beth came along. She...she was like you. An annoying little pain in my ass I couldn’t live without and would never want to, not for more than a moment.”

“The blonde girl,” Tara recalls, and Maggie sighs, turning around and tugging Tara back onto her side.

“Stay on your side or sit up, I won’t have you choking. You never met her, but...you were there. When we found out she was gone. You saw how bad it hurt me...I bet that’s how much Lilly loved you. How much it hurt her to leave you behind.”

Tara chokes on a soft, gasping sob, fresh tears starting to flow down her cheeks at the thought of losing Lilly. Maggie persists, not feeling like she can stop. The words are coming from her now like an unstopped drain, and despite a few - albeit feeble - efforts, she can’t get the plug back in place. “You haven’t been eatin’ well, Tara. Haven’t been sleepin’ well either, I bet. ‘N I’ve seen the bottles. You really think this is what she’d want for you? Draggin’ yourself through your days like you’re just waitin’ to die? She’s gone and of course you miss her, that pain ain’t just gonna go away, but that doesn’t mean you have to go too.”

Tara sniffles pathetically, starting to cry harder, and that sound breaks Maggie’s heart, but the other girl slowly sinks down onto the floor beside her, burrowing into her embrace before it’s even offered. Maggie sighs, wrapping her arms around Tara as her head drops onto her chest, resting her chin on top of Tara’s head. “Come on, hon...try to stop cryin’ for me, come on…”

It takes a while - longer than she would have guessed, and she’s sure Glenn’s probably back home wondering where she’s gone, but that’s barely a distant thought at the back of her mind as she smooths a hand down Tara’s back, trying to console her. Finally she’s just sniffling again, no more sobs, and Maggie gently disentangles herself a bit, nudging Tara off her so she can move her tingling, half-asleep legs.

When the pins and needles fade away, she pats her lap again, and Tara lays her head across her knees slowly, curled up in a ball with her knees tucked up to her chest. “The way I see it,” Maggie begins, gingerly treading around the very sensitive territory she’s about to try to cross between them. “You’re missin’ an older sister, and I...I’m missin’ a younger one. That math seems simple enough to me. I may not be  _ your  _ big sister, but I’m  _ a  _ big sister, and I hope that can be good enough for you, because you’re sure as hell good enough for me. So let me mother the hell out of you, ridiculously overprotect you, and try my best to be what you need so bad. Because...I need that hole filled too.”

Tara moves so she’s looking up at Maggie, her eyes still glassy with unshed tears, shining tracks still trailing down her cheeks in the dim light of the lamp. “‘M not  _ your  _ little sister...but I...I could use some mothering...and overprotecting…if you’ve got some to spare…”

“More than enough,” Maggie promises, a smile dancing at the corner of her mouth, and it’s pretty difficult to fight it back. “Overflowin’ with mothering that isn’t my job to do and overprotectiveness you can relentlessly fight back against and roll your eyes about.”

“Can roll my eyes…” Tara offers softly. “Only if you tell me they’re gonna freeze like that, though…”

“They will,” Maggie teases at once, gently smoothing a loose strand of Tara’s hair back behind her ear. “You wanna spend your life lookin’ up at the ceiling? Cause that’s where you’re headed,  _ missy- _ ”

Tara laughs softly, wiping at her eyes with her sleeve. “Could you, uh...could you stay here tonight…? You don’t have to, not if you don’t want to, but...I don’t wanna be alone…”

“Glenn can manage by himself one night,” Maggie promises at once, no matter how unsure she is of exactly how well Glenn  _ can  _ manage by himself. “I’m stayin’, Tara. I’m stayin’.”

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But when she wakes up, she’s alone on the couch they fell asleep on together, her arm still sprawled out limply to the side where she’d wrapped it around Tara’s shoulders. The empty spot where Tara had fallen asleep last night is still warm, and Maggie picks herself up slowly, taking a moment to stretch before going after her.

She checks her bedroom first, and she’s just starting to worry when that comes up empty, but then she spots a thin crack of light from under the bathroom door, followed by a rough gagging noise. Tentatively, she makes her way down the hall, lightly rapping her knuckles against the hard wooden door. “Tara, hon, you alright in there?”

No response. Maggie knocks again after a moment, still feeling that same small fire of familiar, protective worry. “Can I come in?”

Tara groans weakly, and Maggie takes that as permission to enter, carefully pushing the door open to find the other woman crouched on the floor in front of her toilet, her forehead resting on the rim of the seat. “You been sick yet?”

Tara shakes her head minutely, obviously not wanting to risk any big movements. Maggie hums sympathetically, reaching for a hair tie on the surface of the sink. Careful not to pull, she sweeps Tara’s hair back in one smooth motion, running her fingers through it for a moment before snapping the tie into place. “Better out than in, just get it all out…”

Tara gags again and Maggie gently rests a hand on her back, rubbing small circles between her shoulder blades. “Good girl. You’ll feel better when you’re done, just let it out…”

Her head drops, and Maggie internally flinches as she hears Tara give a productive retch, heaving harshly over the bowl. A few sick-sounding coughs, another rough gag that brings up the last of the liquor from last night, and Tara falls back, panting slightly, congested and stuffy-nosed with a few tears of exertion trickling down her cheeks. “You look like shit,” Maggie tells her affectionately, ruffling her hair. “All done?”

She gets a weak thumbs-up as an answer, Tara still fighting to get her breath back. “Good girl. Come on, rinse your mouth out…” Maggie grabs her arm and pulls her to her feet, pointing her to the sink for a glass of water and a good tooth-brushing. “I’ll get you some breakfast going, and then we’ll start cleaning this place up, all right?”

She starts to go, heading for the kitchen, but Tara stops her suddenly with a hand closing around her upper arm, pulling her back. “Mags…?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

It’s just one word, a simple expression of gratitude, but there’s more behind it than that, a shine in Tara’s eyes that Maggie didn’t know she missed until it came back after being gone for so long. She turns back and pulls Tara into a hug, quick but tight and full of love. “No problem, T. Now get your teeth clean before you get cavities.”

“Yes,  _ Mom, _ ” Tara mumbles darkly, all for the theatrics, and the short laugh that comes out of Maggie is entirely genuine as she starts back to the kitchen for some protein to help with that hangover. 


End file.
